By most accounts, this month’s 16-day shutdown of the federal government was a political disaster for the Republican Party. And perhaps the greatest wound suffered by the GOP in this matter is the decline in public favor for the Tea Party movement, which is widely seen as the tail that wags the Republican dog.

John Judis of the New Republic SPECULATES HERE on the future of the Tea Party in the wake of the shutdown debacle:

[T]he Tea Party’s failure to wring concessions from the Obama administration—and the palpable damage it [the shutdown] inflicted on the Republican Party—may even presage ...